Lords of Mayhem #1: Lachlan and Elowyn

Chapter 12 (Elowyn): Confronting Avoidance

***TW for reference to domestic violence ***

I understand.

It was too soon to ask. I'm sorry.

I love you, Wyn.

That's all the tiny card said that came with the bouquet of flowers just delivered to the store. For Lachlan to send flowers was unusual. He was a more practical gesture kind of man. A brake job for my car. Washing my car every week and detailing it. Turning over a section of our backyard to create a vegetable garden for me because I mentioned I wanted to start one. Researching what vegetables you shouldn't grow together to help me lay out the seeds properly. Laying down a brick patio in the backyard because I'd mentioned wanting one. Researching how to make a koi pond that I wanted and then finding all the different colors of koi he could.

Do you want a variety of colors or just go with the gold and white ones, Wyn?

In the time we'd been together, Lachlan had rarely veered from the practical. He'd given me three pieces of jewelry over five years, things he'd noticed me looking at when we'd been out but which had been too much money so I'd walked on by. They'd miraculously appeared on the kitchen table the next morning, not wrapped, in whatever box the jeweler had provided. Lachlan never held them back until my birthday or Christmas.

"My birthday's in six weeks," I'd protested when I'd opened the earrings. "We'll just call this an early birthday present."

"No, we won't," Lach had said. "You don't ask for anything."

I'd wanted to ask for something, but I was afraid he'd ask for something in return, and that I just couldn't do.

"This is why you never tie yourself to a man," my mother had told me, pointing to her swollen face and split lip. "So you can just take off if necessary."

Now he'd sent flowers in response to my turning him down when he asked if I would let him come visit.

"Pretty flowers," Roberta said to me, admiring the mixed bouquet of pink lilies and roses in the clear glass vase that I'd set on the checkout counter. Once again, Roberta had lingered behind the others at the end of book club, making sure she was always the last to buy the next week's book selection.

"Thank you," I said, admiring them right along with her.

"Did you find an answer to your question yet?"

She'd been asking for five weeks now, and I was no closer to an answer despite Lach's daily texts.

"Not really. No. I mean, how do you ever know if a cheater's actually changed?"

"That's a great question, and I wish I had an answer to it," she said thoughtfully. "I think it's similar to when no blood test exists to prove someone definitively has a disease and they have to go by the symptoms to make a diagnosis. You kind of have to look at a cheater and go by the signs to determine in what ways he's changed...or hasn't changed."

"I just don't know," I semi-whined.

"One of the hardest things in the world is to find out that your man is cheating on you. Your trust is destroyed and it takes a huge leap of faith to even think about trusting again."

Hmmm. "I knew," I admitted to her.

"Oh, Elowyn, I'm sure you did. I think women almost always know, deep down."

Could this get any more uncomfortable?

"No, I'm not talking about a gut feeling, Roberta. I mean we'd been seeing each other...and then right as we were talking about my becoming his ol' lady, he told me I needed to know that he'd occasionally cheat on me, but that I was the one he loved and he'd always come home to me."